Owen became interested in variable stars at a young age and became a life member of the American Association for Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) during high school. We both attended Christian colleges in Indiana during which we both interned at the Harvard/Smithsonian Observatory before being drawn to the Harvard campus for graduate school and ultimately our career work. This was further fueled by parents who brought home astronomy books from the library for us to devour. It was one that very much mirrored my own: In small-town America, we were exposed to the dark, starry night, which grabbed both of our imaginations as youngsters. In an oral history recorded by David DeVorkin in 2005, Owen recounted his childhood introduction to astronomy. Owen Gingerich delivers a lecture at a 2011 conference on religion and science. He gave scores of invited lectures on this topic on college campuses and at conferences. This desire to show that one can both embrace mainstream science, with its understandings of geology and evolution of life, as well as embrace Christianity, was a big part of Owen’s life. Owen considered himself an anti-Creationism Christian, believing in “intelligent design” by a Creator rather than “Intelligent Design” (capitalized), which he saw as more of an undesirable political anti-evolution movement. One of Owen’s last published books, God’s Planet, is a thought-provoking read of Owen’s exploration of the boundary between religion and science. Owen was born in Iowa in 1930 to Mennonite parents, and his faith remained a big part of his life until the end indeed, Owen was heavily involved in discussions of the interplay between science and Christianity, believing that one does not contradict the other. Owen was a walking astronomy encyclopedia and a prolific writer of books, invited conference papers, and articles for professional journals. Owen held joint appointments at Harvard (Professor of Astronomy and of History of Science) and at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (astrophysicist), and he kept busy in his research, writing, and lecturing well into his retirement years, until shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out. Owen Jay Gingerich, well-known historian of astronomy and contributor to Sky & Telescope for more than a half century, died on May 28, 2023, after some years of gradually declining health. Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian
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